A Tale of Two Dollar Stores

When Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, two of the largest dollar stores in North America, agreed to merge, it was the ultimate collision of Wall Street and Main Street. While hedge funds stand to make millions of dollars from the deal, the millions of Americans on limited budgets who rely on such stores will unfortunately be left behind. The strategy behind the merger is that by combining the two companies’ purchasing power, the resulting firm can extract better deals from its suppliers. The model here, as it is for most low-price stores, is Wal-Mart.